Last Saturday I had the privilege of attending "February Flurry", which is hosted at Mohawk College by ASCY Hamilton. A few friends from Peel had talked about this conference a lot last year, so I thought I would attend.
I was able to attend 2 amazing PD sessions while munching on some fabulous food and re-connecting with some Twitter peeps and colleagues. Susan Stacey, author of Emergent Curriculum in Early Years Settings, The Unscripted Classroom and Pedagogical Documentation in the Early Years was my first session. She is a dynamic speaker who truly loves her work and is mindful of her students and her colleagues and how each of them learns and creates. I learned a lot from her books and even more from hearing her speak.
My 2nd session was with Aviva Fudem and Simone Spiegl from Thinking in Education, or ThinkinEd for short. These ladies are amazing, vivacious and all around cool people. They are mindful of their audience and create workshops and programs that incorporate loose parts and the imagination of everyone in the room. Truly mind blowing and thought provoking.
But, the biggest influence of the day - the one speaker that I can't stop raving about - is Drew Dudley. I had never heard of him until Saturday morning. But I was blown away by his ideas. (If you haven't heard of him, look him up on Ted Talks. Do it now. You won't be disappointed.)
Drew has been researching and developing ideas around leadership. He has devoted his professional career to being authentically mindful about what leaders do and how we can promote leadership in everyone. I have begun to follow his advice about writing down my core values, defining them and then working on how to recognize other people's leadership everyday.
One of Drew's questions, that I will leave as a little parting gift here, is this:
"Why do you matter?"
Think about this long and hard before you answer. And then make sure you do. And own it.
Mindfully yours,
Pam
This is why I matter. To them.
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